Autonomous driving: A big
public debut for a self-driving bus in Las Vegas turned out to be trouble. An autonomous shuttle bus collided with a
semi-truck just a few hours after Las Vegas city officials held a ceremony to
celebrate its first day as part of a larger
city-wide test. (Read here).
Waymo makes history testing on public roads with no one at the wheel. (Read here).
Tencent is reportedly testing its own
autonomous driving system. (Read here).

Safety: Ford made a trucker hat that uses technology to save
truckers’ lives. The new SafeCap tracks head movement to determine whether
drivers are safely awake or about to snooze. (Read here).

Geographical expansion: Opel will enter more than 20 new
markets by 2022, with Argentina, Saudi Arabia,
and Taiwan among countries identified as potential export markets. Opel also is
exploring whether to sell cars in China and Brazil. With Opel's entire lineup
moving to PSA platforms, Opel has much more freedom to pursue sales in
non-European markets. (Read here).

Connected cars: Ola
partners with Microsoft to build a connected
vehicle platform for car manufacturers. (Read here).
Denso announces it has developed a thin-film transistor enabling it to produce
what it says is the world’s largest
automotive head-up display, a human-machine interface with a nearly 24-in.
(61-cm) projection. (Read here).

Technology Investments: Boeing’s investment arm, Boeing Horizon X
Ventures, has made its first investment in materials research, in the form of
Gamma Alloys. (Read here).

Avionics: Honeywell’s suite
of advanced cockpit technologies and industry-leading auxiliary power units has
been selected by China’s Spring Airlines for its future fleet of Airbus
A320neo aircraft. (Read here).

UI Issues: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI
confusion. (Read here).
UI often doesn’t get same importance in aerospace and defense as in automotive
and other consumer-oriented sectors. This
incident should highlight the importance of
UI in aerospace and defense sector also.

Flying Taxis: Uber has partnered with NASA to help it
develop air traffic management systems for its flying taxi initiatives. (Read here).

Space: Thales Alenia Space has signed a contract with the UK
Space Agency to work on MicroCarb, a joint UK-French satellite mission which
will measure sources and sinks of carbon, the principal greenhouse gas driving
global warming. (Read here).

Software/ High-Tech

Technology updates: Airbnb develops an AI which converts the
design into the source code. (Read here).
IBM says it has created a prototype 50 qubit quantum computer. What does that
mean? It would be a machine close to the threshold at which it could perform
tasks beyond the reach of conventional supercomputers. (Read here).

Business model: Intelsat and Coca-Cola
are working together to bring satellite-enabled
Wi-Fi services to remote communities
across Africa. (Read here).

Graphics chips: Intel to develop its own graphics chips led
by former AMD exec. (Read here). Intel
and AMD team up against Nvidia to produce a new laptop chip. (Read here).

Technology updates: A new patent filing from
telecommunications provider Comcast suggests the firm is looking at how to
store operational data on a blockchain. The blockchain database would hold
private and identifying information for customers, and would only be accessible
by certain entities. (Read here).

Medical Devices

Product innovation: A regular ultrasound machine costs over
$100,000 but a new ultrasound on a chip device attached to a smartphone will be $2000 in 2018. It will be
portable and will eventually make ultrasound as common
as blood pressure cuffs in hospitals, clinics,
and doctors offices and with first responders and field medics. Butterfly iQ is
FDA 510(k) cleared for diagnostic imaging across 13 clinical applications which
span the whole body. (Read here).

Drones in Mining: Drones are now operating underground.
Mining companies look to automation to help companies dig out more ore and save
lives. (Read here).

Drones in O&G: A satellite imaging company, Orbital
Insights, is challenging Saudi Arabia’s reports of declining oil inventory
suggesting that OPEC’s leader may have well been lying to get prices higher.
(Read here).
What is possible by satellite imaging today can be verified by drones tomorrow.

IoT

Testbed: The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), announced
the Digital Solar Plant testbed. The testbed is led by LTI and GE Digital and
will deploy in multiple phases at an L&T Solar plant in Rajasthan, India.
(Read here).

Platforms: Telia Estonia has started trialing a self-service platform for its IoT customers, allowing
them to manage SIM cards and mobile data traffic. (Read here).

PLM / Industry 4.0

Machine Vision and AI for Quality: The Domino’s Pizza group
is implementing an artificial intelligence camera system from Dragontail
Systems which will be deployed to check pizzas for quality before they are handed to customers. (Read here).

Service provider M&A: AXISCADES announced the
acquisition of Mistral, a Bengaluru-based embedded technology company. (Read here).
SEGULA Technologies has announced its acquisition
of EK Design, a German company specializing
in the automotive and industrial / special
vehicle sector. (Read here).

EV investments: Ashok Leyland, an Indian truck manufacturer,
is looking to pump $61.5 Mn-$77 Mn (INR 400 Cr-INR 500 Cr) into its electric
vehicle business over the next three to five years. (Read here).
Hong Kong Billionaire Li Ka-Shing agreed
to buy shares in O Luxe Holdings Ltd. for the second time in a month, a deal
that would make Hong Kong’s richest man the second-largest investor in the
owner of an electric-car maker. (Read here).
Indian government to procure another 20,000 electric cars for its fleet. (Read here).

EV charging infrastructure investments: BMW Group, Daimler,
Ford Motor Company, and the Volkswagen Group will join up to create a
high-power charging network for electric vehicles called “Ionity,” which will build and operate around
400 charging stations across Europe by 2020. (Read here).
Indian government invites snap bid for electric vehicle chargers. (Read here).

Autonomous driving: Waymo is investing a lot of time and
effort on building out the user experience of its self-driving vehicles, which
includes both the external and internal user-facing features of its autonomous
cars. (Read here).
Delphi partners with leading Chinese map and location service supplier,
AutoNav. This will enhance Delphi’s
support to customers in the Chinese market on connected infotainment and
navigation systems and will lay a
foundation for Delphi to bring automated driving systems to the Chinese market.
(Read here).
Germany has developed a set of ethical guidelines for self-driving cars. (Read here).

Connected cars: Ford is partnering with Qualcomm, AT&T, and Nokia to test cellular modems
that can connect vehicles to each other and roadside infrastructure to help
navigate in bad weather or construction zones. The technology, known as
cellular-V2X, is meant to connect vehicles with traffic lights, roadside beacons, and other vehicles to share real-time information about the driving
conditions around them. It's supposed to improve safety and help speed the
deployment of self-driving vehicles. (Read here).

Railways

Technology investments: China’s hybrid electric tram powered
by hydrogen (H2) fuel cells has begun commercial operation. It is the first commercial H2-powered tram in the world and
made by CRRC. It can be refilled with H2 in 15 minutes and can run for 40
kilometers at a maximum speed of 70 km per hour. (Read here).

MRO: Aviation MRO companies want 18% GST scrapped. (Read here).
In 2016, Indian airlines spent $950 m on MRO,
but only 10% business came to Indian MRO companies. MRO business has an
exponential growth potential in India. Global civil aircraft fleet was about
19,000 at the beginning of 2016, and it will be double to 38000+ by 2034. The
majority of growth in aircraft will come from Asia.

Testing: Airbus has wrapped up functional, and reliability testing for its A350-1000 and is expecting to achieve certification for the twinjet
this month. (Read here).

Business model: Grab, the Uber rival in Southeast Asia, is
now officially also a digital payments company. (Read here).

Telecom/
Semiconductor

Business model: Orange launches its own bank in France,
aiming to win 2million users (25 percent of France's online banking market) by
capitalizing on the rising use of smartphones. (Read here).

Legacy infrastructure: Indian Telecom major Airtel is likely
to shut down 3G network faster than 2G network in next 3-4 years. There are
still 50 per cent of phone being shipped out in India that are feature phones. (Read
here).
So 2G will continue for some more time but 3G will be replaced by 4G very soon.

M&A/ consolidation: Broadcom Ltd. is considering a bid
of more than $100 billion for Qualcomm in what would be the biggest-ever
takeover of a chipmaker. (Read here).

Contract: Bell and Howell has selected the ThingWorx
industrial innovation platform to transform its service organization by
enabling remote monitoring and service of its connected industrial mechatronic
machines. (Read here).

PLM / Industry 4.0

Startup/ Technology invetsments: Rockwell Automation announced
its investment in The Hive, a Silicon Valley innovation fund and co-creation
studio, to gain access to an ecosystem of innovators and technology start-ups
with a focus on applications of artificial intelligence (AI) to industrial
automation. (Read here).

Others

Service provider M&A: QuEST has announced the
acquisition of IT Six Global, a Romania based engineering services provider.
(Read here).

Tesla strikes a deal with
Shanghai to build a factory in China. The arrangement could enable electric-car maker
to slash production costs; firm would still likely incur 25% import tariff.
(Read here).

Daimler is jumping the gun on Tesla by showing off a
battery-powered heavy-duty truck weeks before the California electric-car maker's own planned unveiling. The
E-Fuso Vision One prototype can carry 11 tons of cargo as far as 220 miles
before recharging. (Read here).

Uniti says it will manufacture its light electric cars in
Landskrona, Sweden. The company is set to launch the new electric vehicle at
the new manufacturing facility on December 7, 2017. (Read here).

Toyota will keep in-house what it calls its
"game-changing" solid state
battery technology, despite working with Mazda and Denso on a new architecture
for electric cars. (Read here).
Toyota sees traditional gas engines phased out of its line by the 2040s. (Read here).

EV news from India. Maruti Suzuki to make electric cars.
(Read here).
Tata Motors began a pilot-run of its 9-meter electric
bus in Assam and claimed that it has become
the first automaker to get Arai and homologation certifications for its 9-m and
12-m electric buses. (Read here).

Amazon got the patent for developing a drone that can
connect to transfer electricity to a car in motion. (Read here).

BMW office was searched
by European Union officials investigating an alleged cartel among five German
carmakers (BMW, Daimler, VW, Audi, and
Porsche) to limit their spending on emissions technology. (Read here). Daimler and VW
offices were also raided subsequently.
(Read here).

From Toyota, vehicles driven by emotions. The common thread
is an artificial intelligence system that taps deep learning to absorb the
driver's habits and behavior, make predictions and suggestions and protect the
occupants. (Read here).

Kia Motors America Inc. is
recalling 342,381 Souls for the second time in the U.S. because an
initial repair may not have fixed a steering flaw. (Read here).

Subaro set to recall
up to 400,000 vehicles in Japan in the wake of
improper inspections by uncertified workers. (Read here).

The aviation industry may have a major crisis on its hands, as the number of pilots needed to fly
commercial airliners is dwindling. Between 2017 and 2036, about 640,000 new
pilots will be needed to fly commercial
airplanes worldwide. As the demand for pilots grows, so does the retirement
rate among current aviators operating commercial aircraft. (Read here).

Glitches in Pratt & Whitney's engines used by IndiGo and
GoAir on their new Airbus A320neo planes have led to as many as 64 of them
having to be removed for repair and replacement by the two airlines in the last
year and a half on 32 aircraft, said people aware of the matter. That,
according to experts, is more than six times the usual number, leading to
hundreds of canceled flights (Read here).

Dassault Aviation said it would invest €100 million in its defense joint venture with the Anil Ambani-led
Reliance Group. The facility will manufacture several components of the offset
obligation connected to the purchase of 36 Rafale fighters from France. (Read here).

We all know about bird strike analysis in the aircraft
design. Here are some statistics - In 2017 alone, there have been 18 incidents
of bird strikes at the Bangalore airport. The Bangalore Airport Limited (BIAL) wants to conduct a special ornithological study for evaluating
bird activities in and around the region in the backdrop of its expansion
plans. (Read here).

JetBlue plan to add more seats to its Airbus SE A320 planes
is running into an obstacle: broken toilets. The Space Flex lavatories supplied by Zodiac Aerospace are crucial to
JetBlue’s plan to reconfigure its fleet of A320 jets. (Read here).

Boeing stopped loading new airplane sections onto its 777
assembly line as workers scrambled to
catch up on a growing amount of
unfinished work, which has grown in recent months as the company continues to
implement new automation into the widebody’s fuselage assembly process. (Read here).
Automation can delay production in the short
term!

After a natural disaster, the process of finding survivors
can be a dangerous and arduous undertaking. There might be downed power-lines,
impassable flooded streets, or unstable ground to work around. A new drone from
Parrot has the potential to help. Outfitted with a thermal camera, the Bebop
Pro Thermal can fly over devastated areas and feed a live image back to an app,
providing up-to-date status information and identifying hot spots -- including
the heat given off by a survivor's body. (Read here).

Amazon is launching a service that will let couriers open
people's front doors and put deliveries inside. Users of Amazon Key will need a
smart lock and Cloud Cam camera. ( Read here).

The Google recently launched Pixel 2 XL and reports
began to surface that the device’s OLED screen was already exhibiting signs of
burn-in, which left UI elements faintly evident after switching screens. (Read here).

Amazon will soon let you order from restaurants using the
Amazon app on your phone. (Read here).

Telecom/
Semiconductor

Finnish mobile operator Elisa and the mobile payments
company Fortumo announced a partnership for the launch of direct carrier
billing. More than 2 million Elisa subscribers can now make purchases in app
stores, inside games, and for digital
content by charging payments to their mobile phone bill. (Read here).
While credit card ownership in Finland is relatively high, standing at 63%,
carrier billing has become a popular payment method thanks to its simplicity
and security. The main benefits of carrier billing over card-based payments are
that the payments take only a few seconds to complete and do not require users
to share personal data.

Robotic underwater miners can go where humans can’t. The
goal is to extract mineral resources from abandoned, flooded mine sites
previously considered too dangerous or costly to access. (Read here).

Kindred robots are learning to grab and sort clothing in a warehouse
for the Gap. (Read here).

Microsoft has stopped manufacturing the Kinect sensor, which
has given robots affordable eyes since its launch in 2010. (Read here). Earlier this year Google sold its robotics
arm, Boston Dynamics. It looks like
Google and Microsoft are not bullish on the robotics prospects.

RTI Surgical, a global surgical implant company, announced the introduction of TETRAfuse® 3D
Technology, providing surgeons a solution they have been seeking. From the
beginning, surgeons have had to choose between bone in-growth, radiolucency or
mechanical strength when selecting a spinal interbody implant. TETRAfuse 3D
Technology is the first 3D printed polymer implant material that has
demonstrated trabecular bone ingrowth while maintaining radiolucency and
bone-like mechanical properties. (Read here).

IoT

Meet the “connected cow.” Dairy herds are being connected to sensors and mobile phones.
(Read here).

Exelon signed a deal
with GE Power to sift the data with Predix, GE’s IoT platform. (Read here).

Imagine a fully loaded Boeing 747 crashing four times a
week, every week, with no survivors. Over a 52-week period, that would result
in about 100,000 lives lost. That’s roughly the same number of deaths in the
United States each year that can be attributed
to infections contracted in hospital operating rooms. HUNTAIR is using BIM to solve this challenge leveraging its
semiconductor’s clean room expertise. (Read here).

Others

Saudi Arabia announced plans to build a $500 billion
mega-city that's 33 times the size of New York City. (Read here).

GE explores divesting its transportation, healthcare IT
businesses. (Read here).
Will any Indian IT service provider interested in GE’s healthcare IT business?

The Chinese government plans to launch its Social Credit
System in 2020. The aim? To judge the trustworthiness – or otherwise – of its
1.3 billion residents. (Read here).

Rolls-Royce built the new Phantom VIII for billionaires who like
driving. (Read here).
I think it’s time to change assumptions in car designing that entry and mid-level
cars are self-driven and luxury cars are chauffeur
driven. With shared mobility and likes of Uber, Lyft, Ola the entry, and mid cars
are increasingly not self-driven, and
some billionaires might like driving too.

Tesla Inc is modifying new cars delivered to China and
retrofitting the charging network in the country to comply with domestic norms. (Read here).
Even Tesla can’t ignore China’s rules of the game.

Tesla also agrees to raise pay at German division. (Read here).
Even Tesla is not immune to labor issues.

EV party has not even started,
and there is talk that EV battery suppliers such as Samsung and LG Chem will face
capacity crunch. (Read here).
There is room for new players in this
market. Start-up company Northvolt said that
it had picked its home country Sweden to build Europe's biggest factory for electric car batteries, rivaling Tesla's American "Gigafactory." Once fully
operational, the site is to produce lithium-ion batteries totaling 32 Gigawatt
hours (GWh) per year. (Read here).

Nissan Vehicle-to-Grid program
is spreading in Europe. The scheme has been tested in Denmark and is to
begin its European rollout next year. The trial involving a fleet of e-NV200
vans resulted in weekly revenue of €40 per vehicle for their owners. (Read here).

While EV is gaining momentum, some deeper questions are also raised.
Ferrari CEO says electric cars may not be as clean as they seem. (Read here).

GM’s Cruise Automation will expand its test pool while keeping a focus on city driving,
something it has said gives it an edge in the autonomous
driving space. What better city to use for testing, then, than New York, one of
the densest and most hectic traffic nightmares in North America. (Read here).

Ford recalls about 1.3
million 2015-17 F-150 and 2017 Super Duty vehicles in North America because of
potential door problems. (Read here).

The circular economy
is gaining traction. Michelin has acquired Lehigh Technologies, a specialty
materials company that uses patented cryogenic turbo mill technology to
transform rubber from end-of-life tires and industrial goods into materials for
new tires and other products, reducing the
amount of raw materials initially
needed. (Read here).

Aerospace

Airbus and Bombardier announce C Series partnership. (Read here).
Some people are calling this the deal of the century in aerospace. Bombardier
has been facing financial and scale problem despite having a superior product
in the narrow-body single-aisle segment. The US recently levied 300% (Yes 300%) duty on
Bombardier. All these problems of
Bombardier are taken care of. Airbus got a great product in this segment
and will manufacture Ce series in the US
to avoid duties. Airbus one step ahead of Boeing now. But for us analysts, the duopoly of Boeing and Airbus continues
in Aerospace. The first credible number 3 player is acquired. Now all eyes on
China’s COMAC and Brazil’s Embraer.

Speaking of Embraer, it announced the delivery of its first
E190-E2 in April 2018. Widerøe, the largest
regional carrier operating in the Nordic countries, is the launch customer to
receive the newest, upgraded version of the prosperous
E-Jet family of aircraft. (Read here).

The one good news for Boeing this week is that India’s Jet
Airways had agreed to buy 75 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in the deal value of $9.3 billion
at the list price. (Read here).

A Seattle-area startup, Zunum Aero, backed by the venture
capital arms of Boeing Co and JetBlue Airways Corp announced plans to bring a
small hybrid-electric commuter aircraft to market by 2022. (Read here).

Boeing, reversing the tide
of cuts, rushes to bring back retirees as temps. Boeing is hiring back 500 to
800 retirees on a temporary basis. (Read here).
Skill development in aerospace sector is one the biggest challenge which aerospace enterprises and engineering service
providers are facing. Hiring retirees could be a temporary solution.

Rolls-Royce Trent 7000 powers Airbus A330neo first flight
test. The Trent 7000 is not only 6dB quieter than the 700 model, but it also features a 10% specific fuel
consumption improvement thanks to its small, high pressure-ratio core and the
latest, fully swept, wide-chord fan technology. (Read here).

Smart Home. The smart home market continues to heat up, and
the legacy giants do not want to get locked out: quite literally. Assa Abloy,
the $23 billion Swedish lock giant that owns Yale and many other brands —
announced that it is buying US-based smart lock maker August Home to double
down on new technology. August home has only 90 employees. (Read here).

Smart Cities. Google is entering into smart cities. Alphabet group company Sidewalk
Labs Is trying to reinvent the city, starting with Toronto. (Read here).

Smart Railways. GE uses IoT and AI to find rail track flaws
that could cause derailments. (Read here). This solution, if it does what it
says, can save many lives in India where
every other month we hear about train accidents and derailments. (Read here).

New business models are evolving in the car industry. Porsche
will start a “subscription service” for customers that could give them access
to a number of their sports cars and SUVs, from $2,000 per month. (Read here).
Volkswagen plans to reduce the size of its European dealer network and
introduce online sales as it adjusts to changing buying habits. (Read here).

There is a race to build EV charging infrastructure. Shell
has agreed to buy NewMotion, a Netherlands-based provider of more than 30,000
private home electric charging points for EVs as well as 50,000 public sites. The
move is the biggest yet by “big oil” into the electric
vehicle refueling market, which is forecast to grow dramatically in the coming
years. Earlier this year France’s Total bought Dutch company PitPoint, which provides natural gas refueling
for vehicles as well as operating a number of
EV charging points in Europe. (Read here).
ABB has submitted a bid to provide 4,500 charging points as part of the Indian
Government’s tender to procure electric vehicles. (Read here).
Fortum partners NBCC to set up EV charging infra in projects in India. (Read here).
Groupe Renault has acquired a 25 percent
share in smart charging company Jedlix, a Dutch start-up launched by the Eneco
Group that specializes in sustainable charging of electric vehicles. (Read here).

Beijing's green car push helps Chinese battery makers reign.
Technologically strong Japanese, South Korean rivals fight to stay relevant. Team
China had a share of just over 60% of the global market by volume followed by
Japan 20% and Korea 10%. The top five vendors are all Chinese. (Read here).

How to develop a business
case of EVs in the country where fuels costs are as cheap as they could be. Well, give consumers free charging. Dubai to give free charging,
Salik for electric cars. Incentives hoped to boost electric car ownership in
the emirate. (Read here).

More EV rollout announcements. VW to roll out electric trucks,
buses in $1.7 Billion projects. Electric trucks for local deliveries will probably
exceed a 5% market share by 2025, according to the head of the VW Truck &
Bus division. That compares to a forecast
of about 25% for battery-powered cars. (Read here).
BMW is looking to form a joint venture with Great Wall Motor in China, which
could focus on electric vehicles. (Read here).

Volkswagen Group's plan to cut costs by creating a new parts
business could unlock funds for its move to electric vehicles and herald an
eventual spin-off that could transform its profitability. (Read here).

More cities and countries come up with their ban on
combustion engine cars. Paris plans ban
on combustion-engine cars by 2030. (Read here).
The Dutch government confirms plan to ban new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.
(Read here).

Even Uber is doing its bit. Uber drivers will be banned from using vehicles that are not a
hybrid or fully electric in London from 2020, as part of a plan to help tackle
illegal levels of air pollution in the capital. Uber’s 40,000 licensed drivers
in London will be offered grants of up to
£5,000 towards a hybrid or fully electric car. (Read here).

A bunch of announcement by GM. General Motors is working on
a self-driving truck platform called the Silent Utility Rover Universal
Superstructure (SURUS). The modular platform will have self-driving
capabilities and will be able to run on unpredictable, off-road terrain. It
could be used in many different ways from
acting as logistical support to emergency, backup power generation and as plain
utility trucks. (Read here).
General Motors boosts self-driving car credentials with the acquisition of lidar startup Strobe. ( Read here).

Baidu plans to mass produce Level 4 self-driving cars with
BAIC by 2021. This shows how new-age technology companies will partner with
OEMs and not necessarily rivals. (Read here).

End users are also developing plans for autonomous vehicles. US Postal Services plans to work
autonomy into its 228,000-vehicle fleet. Those plans
are already in motion: The post office has partnered with the University of
Michigan to build what it’s calling an Autonomous Rural Delivery Vehicle, which
it wants to launch on 28,000 rural routes nationwide as early as 2025.
(Read here).
U.S. chipmaker Nvidia, German supplier ZF and logistics giant Deutsche Post DHL
have partnered to deploy a test fleet of autonomous electric delivery trucks
starting in 2018. (Read here).

Tier-1s are also developing their autonomous platforms. Panasonic aims to launch autonomous driving system in 2022. (Read here). Magna
has struck a deal with BMW, Intel, and
Mobileye to bring a new self-driving platform to the automotive market by 2021.
(Read here).

While the world is doubling
down on autonomous driving investments, one person betting against it is Warren Buffet. Warren Buffett had invested in
the largest truck-stop chain in North
America, Pilot Flying J. The company has 750 locations across the U.S. and
Canada and more than $20 billion in revenues. This
would not be a good investment if Buffett believed that autonomous trucks were
close to becoming a reality. This is
because at every stop, truck drivers buy not just fuel, but food and other
goods. No truck drivers mean no ancillary sales. (Read here).

Aerospace

Seven more companies have joined the list of customers for
data analytics services from Boeing AnalytX, bringing the total of contracts
signed this year to 223. Boeing AnalytX is part of the aircraft manufacturer’s
drive to capitalize on the growing demand for after-market services ranging
from maintenance to cost-saving efficiencies. When Boeing Global Services was
reorganized as a separate business unit last year, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg
said he was aiming to triple the company’s revenue from aviation services to
$50 billion annually. 800 people in Boeing work for AnalytX. (Read here).

Dassault Aviation, the French maker of Rafale fighter jets,
may build its business aircraft in India, in a boost to Prime Minister Narendra
Modi's push to encourage local manufacturing. Building
the Falcon 2000 planes in India would cut costs while ensuring quality and
execution that meets standards. It bid for a defense contract worth $11 billion
to supply 126 Rafale aircraft and eventually won an order for only 36 planes
last year. India had initially agreed to buy all the 126 jets under a
long-delayed deal, even mandating Dassault to build some of them locally. (Read
here).

Honeywell spins off units worth $7.5 billion in sales, keeps
aerospace. Honeywell might make
acquisitions in aerospace now it has
money from the sale of other businesses. (Read here).

British weapons maker BAE Systems said it would eliminate
almost 2,000 jobs as its new chief executive comes to grips with a dearth of
military plane orders and the need to lower costs. (Read here).
It looks a jinx week for UK manufacturing. PSA will cut 400 Vauxhall jobs in the
UK; says production not competitive
compared with France. (Read here).

Australian defense firm was
hacked and F-35 data stolen, DOD confirms. Aerospace engineering service
providers should bump up their cybersecurity practice. (Read here).

Drones

Amazon files a patent
for deploying exclusive drones in India. The firm
says the proposed drones can also be used to identify other such objects, along
with aircraft, plying within Indian skies. (Read here).

Drone with Event Camera takes first autonomous flight. Event
cameras work differently than conventional ones. Instead of recording what a
scene looks like, event cameras record how a
scene changes. Point them at a scene
that isn’t moving, and they won’t show
you anything. But as soon as there’s motion, event cameras show you just that motion on a per-pixel basis and at a very high
refresh rate. (Read here).

Software/ High-Tech

Alibaba is launching a $15 billion drive to build overseas
research hubs as the deep-pocketed firm looks to compete with global leaders in
e-commerce, logistics and cloud technology. (Read here).

Telecom

Airtel is buying struggling Tata Tele In India and is getting
a billion-dollar business for free. It’s a win for Chandra (Tata Sons Chairman)
who wanted to non- performing businesses. Speculation is rife whether it will involve
more media and telecom businesses of Tatas such as Tata Sky, Tata
Communications. Even TCS could benefit from more telecom business from Airtel. (Read here).

Qualcomm confirms filing of a lawsuit against Apple in China to halt the manufacture and sale of
iPhones. (Read here).

Neurosurgery is one of the most complex and difficult specializations that surgeons can
take. With this particular area, having accurate information on what needs to be operated on.
A new augmented reality (AR) system called GLOW allows surgeons to get a better
view. (Read here).

IoT

Salesforce takes another shot at IoT. Salesforce announced a
new IoT initiative called IoT Explorer Edition designed to help customers make
sense of IoT data and put it to work. Salesforce is calling a “low code” way of
generating IoT business workflows. Non-technical personnel can supposedly pick
and choose processes and connect to different devices and sensors to create
some type of automated workflow. (Read here).

Dell Technologies launched a new IoT division to integrate
products and services across the company, as well as new tools to speed up
implementations, and it plans to invest $1 billion in R&D over the next
three years. Dell is betting that edge analytics will be more important
than cloud analytics in IoT. (Read here).

Remember a decade back every major country and state (at
least Indian state) was formulating its IT policy and consulting firms minted
millions in developing their IT policies (Some still do). It now looks IoT is the new IT, and many countries and states will formulate their IoT
policies. Indian state Telangana has formulated
its IoT policy which aims to attract investment and create jobs. The state wants
to do that by becoming a buyer of IoT
product/services, an enabler of the ecosystem with labs/ clusters and trainer by encouraging IoT ready workforce. (Read
here).

PLM

Terumo BCT has selected the PTC Windchill Quality Management
solution to support the company’s continuous improvement initiatives for
quality systems and processes around the world. (Read here).

Apple acknowledges swelling of iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus
and says that they are looking into the problem. Why am I putting this in PLM? Because, it highlights the business problem of
traceability which PLM ISVs and service providers are trying to solve.
(Read here).

Kobe Steel said that about 4 percent of the aluminum and
copper products that it shipped from September 2016 to August 2017 were falsely labeled as meeting the
specifications requested by customers. Products with falsified data were shipped to about 200 companies including Toyota, Mitsubishi, and
Mazda. Automakers have been seeking more advanced products to cut weight while
retaining strength and versatility. This is
a harsh reality for Japanese steel companies: the need to provide higher
quality metals to compete. This is another use case of product and
supplier traceability which PLM can solve. (Read here).

EV push continues. Mitsubishi Motors plans to roll out small
sports utility vehicle-based electric
vehicles in Japan, the U.S., Europe and other markets in the early 2020s. Mini
EVs will also become available in Japan in 2019. (Read here). General Motors is working toward an
all-electric, zero-emissions future. That starts with two new, fully electric
models next year—then at least 18 more by 2023. (Read here). Ford
to cut $14 billion in cost for EV push and is looking for partnerships to
spread risk. (Read here).

Ford has some bigger
troubles also. As Ford pushes into electric vehicles, U.S. union aims to save
jobs. Ford is touting a 30 percent reduction in “hours per unit” to build
electric vehicles. Fewer hours mean fewer workers. (Read here).
JLR brings agreement for the supply of engines from Ford to an end. (Read here).

There is activating in EV space in India. Chinese bus maker
edges out Tata Motors & Ashok Leyland,
wins plum EV contracts. BYD Auto
will supply 25 fully built electric buses
to Himachal Road Transport Corporation as well as six buses to the state-owned
transport service BEST in Mumbai. Secunderabad-based, Goldstone Infratech,
a leading manufacturer of rubber polymer composite insulators, has partnered
BYD to manufacture these buses in India. (Read here).
A week after awarding a Rs 1,120-crore order for electric cars to Tata Motors,
state-run Energy Efficiency Services has offered to give 40% of the order for 10,000 e-vehicles to Mahindra &
Mahindra provided it matches the former's bid. (Read here).

Even Hummer can be
electrified. Hummer 4x4s, which are known for their humungous power, performance, and off-road
capabilities, are also seen as fossil fuel guzzlers. The H1 model consumes
around 24 liters of fuel to travel 100 kilometers and emits up to 470g CO2 per kilometer. Now, there is an eco-friendly option
at hand. Austrian start-up Kriesel Electric has developed the world’s first
prototype electric powertrain for an existing Hummer H1 model, enabling the
butch behemoth to go all electric. (Read here).

Interesting activity
in automotive space in South East Asia. Here comes Vietnam's first domestic automotive
OEM. Vietnamese real estate conglomerate Vingroup JSC has appointed a former
executive of U.S.-based auto giant General Motors as the CEO of its new
car-manufacturing subsidiary VINFAST. Vietnam is a country with great
potential in the field of auto manufacturing where the demand of the domestic
market is expected to be approximately 450,000 - 500,000 vehicles by 2020 and
increase to 800,000 - 900,000 vehicles by
2025. (Read here).
In Malaysia, a new CEO appointed by Chinese automaker Geely to head Malaysia's
Proton presented a 10-year plan to make Proton among Southeast Asia's top
vehicle brands. (Read here).

Vehicle recalls are making news again. Fiat Chrysler recalls nearly 710,000 Jeep and Dodge SUVs in
North America because an improperly installed brake shield could let water leak
in and limit braking ability. (Read here).
Nissan recalls 1.2 million vehicles in
Japan that were produced between October 2014 and September this year to
re-inspect them because they had not gone through the proper final checks.
(Read here).

Rolls-Royce has signed a deal with Google in a move
intended to help the British engineering company to develop autonomous
ships. Rolls-Royce has some 4,000 marine customers worldwide,
including 70 navies. The agreement, which the companies claim is the first of
its kind in the marine sector is significant as it signals Google aspires to be
a major technology player in autonomous
vehicles space and not necessarily compete in final product segment. (Read here).

Aerospace

The U.S. Commerce Department has heaped another big tariff on Bombardier's new C Series jet --
a win for Boeing. The total tariff is now
300%. (Read here).
The one good news for Bombardier this week is that
it is nearing a deal to sell at least 14 of the CS300 planes to Air Baltic in an order with a list value of about $1.25
billion. (Read here).

While Air Baltic is expanding, a couple of other short-haul
European airlines are going bankrupt.
Monarch Airlines went burst last week leaving 100,000+ passengers stranded.
(Read here).
Earlier Air Berlin filed for bankruptcy after Etihad pulled the plug. (Read here).

Flying taxis are getting the attention
of Boeing and Airbus. Boeing plans to acquire Aurora, a maker of aerial drones
and pilotless flying systems in a move the company said could pave the way for
fleets of small flying taxis. Uber selected the Aurora eVTOL to explore potential flying taxis, with
50 due to be delivered by 2020. (Read here).
Airbus and HAX create an accelerator program for flying taxi tech in Shenzhen,
China. ( Read here).

Pratt & Whitney has informed the Directorate General of
Civil Aviation that Indian climatic conditions are primarily responsible for
snags encountered in its engines fitted in Airbus A320 new engine option
planes. (Read here).

Otis to manufacture escalators in India from next year. The
Indian elevator industry is the second largest market after China, with an
estimated 49,000 units in a year, growing at 6-7 percent annually. (Read here).

Software/ High-Tech/
Telecom

Google’s 2017 launch event introduced a whole slew of new
products — but that one that’s undoubtedly making the most waves is the Google Pixel Buds headphones, which is capable
of translating 40 different languages directly into your earholes. (Read here).